Be Kind to Your Employees, but Don’t Always Be Nice

At 39, I was the CEO of a company with a few hundred employees. Depending on the day and the employee you asked, I’d rate anywhere from a zero to a seven on the unkindness scale (10 being a tyrant). I’d guess that I normally hovered around 4.5. I doubt anyone would have rated me a 10—that takes a particular kind of malevolence. I wasn’t taken to raging, other than on one occasion when the lives of the participants in our Montana AIDS Vaccine Ride (a 1,500-person, seven-day bike ride across the Rockies to fight the disease) were in jeopardy during a horrific mountain wind storm that literally blew our temporary city apart. But day to day, I was fairly consistently stern and serious.

Stories of the raging, maniacal CEO are the stuff of legend, from American Apparel’s CEO, Dov Charney, who was accused of choking an employee with both hands, to Walt Disney, whose underlings warned each other he was approaching by repeating the line from Bambi, “Man is in the forest!” Bill Clinton was infamous for his temper tantrums. Even Tim Cook, Apple’s seemingly mild-mannered CEO, terrifies people. In an upcoming book on the CEO, author Yukari Iwatani Kane writes, “When someone was unable to answer a question, Cook would sit without a word while people stared at the table and shifted in their seats. The silence would be so intense and uncomfortable that everyone in the room wanted to back away…Sometimes he would take an energy bar from his pocket while he waited for an answer, and the hush would be broken only by the crackling of the wrapper.”

Is fear and intimidation the only way to build a truly great (not just really good, but great) company? Is kindness a recipe for mediocrity? It’s a tough question. And let’s not kid ourselves that we are always the champions of kindness. When we, as customers, are on the receiving end of a consumer brand screw-up, whether it’s an airline gate attendant ignoring delayed passengers or a software update that disables our cell phone, we sure wish that the company had a dictator at the top prohibiting a culture where these things could happen.

But the choice between kindness and greatness is a false choice. First, there’s a difference between malevolent intent and anxiety-driven unpleasantness. Although some of my employees may have perceived me as unkind, with rare exception I never intended it. Mostly I was consumed with the enormity of the responsibility on my shoulders. There was crushing pressure to keep expenses on our charity events low, and equally intense pressure to make sure the events were safe and the experience was second to none. My company’s future hung in the balance on this tight rope. I felt pressure to keep costs down but pay our talented people more. There were difficult clients holding large receivables over our heads, threatening cash flow. There was the constant demand to continue innovating and to grow. Some leaders may be able to handle that pressure more gracefully than I did, but it doesn’t change the fact that when I acted badly, it was without malicious intent. A friend of mine is a famous entertainment industry executive. He says, “I get paid to worry.” The tendency—and the willingness—to be on guard about everything is part of why some people are able to lead when others are not. And anxiety on the inside rarely produces a nice exterior.

But there’s a more important distinction to consider: There’s a difference between being kind and being nice. Vince Lombardi wasn’t a nice guy. But he drove his players to be the best they could be, and in hindsight, they loved him for it. I’d much rather play for a coach committed to my true potential and willing to sacrifice my perception of him or her in the short term than a coach who’s more concerned about being liked. I’d rather work for someone who loves me than someone who’s nice to me.

The key is permission. It’s not kind to drive me to be the best I can possibly be when I haven’t agreed to it; when I haven’t asked for it.

Ultimately, it’s not a choice between kindness and greatness. It’s a choice between creating or forgoing context. You have to create and maintain a context in which people are expected to rise and want to rise to be their absolute best—where you have people’s express permission to push them beyond their comfort zones. The keys to making that happen are:

Tell all potential employees that they are going to be pushed at your company and that it is going to be the best experience of their lives.

Confirm that they are agreeing to a culture and context of greatness before they come on board.

Hire professionals whose only responsibility is to keep that context alive at all levels.

Help people distinguish between malevolent intimidation and tough love. It will look messy, but when the intent is positive people will feel it.

Establish a zero-tolerance policy for malevolent behavior.

People are human. There will be bursts of anger or pettiness or condescension. When that happens, make sure that you have systems and professionals in place to help people talk it through and talk it out.

Now you can create a culture that is kind AND great. Loving AND powerful. It just won’t always be nice.